As you might have guessed by the title, today in school we practiced cooking grains. I’ve stated before that while I’m a huge fan of carbs, I usually prefer them in bread form. Today’s class was definitely important and informational, though!

On the menu: barley, kasha, wild rice, couscous short-grain brown rice, long-grain brown rice, basmati rice and soba noodles.

Actually cooking everything turned out to be kind of a hectic experience; due to maintenance in one of the kitchens, we were in a smaller setting than usual, which forced the class to get quite cozy with each other: 14 burners covered in pots, lines at the sink to rinse and drain grains, and “hot pot behind you!” being exclaimed from every direction. It was kind of exhilarating, though- I imagine it’s kind of what a commercial kitchen feels like on a busy night. Amongst all the commotion, I gave myself a tiny yet painful burn while rushing to remove a skillet from the oven.

Better than a cut though, by far!

Each group prepared individual batches of the grains, as well as an assigned recipe. My group got a soba-noodle stir-fry, which we made with red peppers, jalepeno, scallions and bok choy.

Other groups had a kasha loaf:

A tabouli:

And a wild rice salad with walnuts and dried currants, which was my favorite after the stir fry.

I also tried all the grains, and determined that kasha is definitely my least favorite of all of them. I like healthy foods, but kasha tastes too healthy. The short grain brown rice was my favorite, but that’s probably because it was slightly over-salted ;) Hey, there’s a reason humans are hard-wired to like salt, sugar and fat…

What are your favorite and least favorite grains?

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